Veteran orchestra board member quits

Ehrig expresses displeasure with vote to replace musicians

Oct. 26, 2011

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William Ehrig was a Louisville Orchestra board member for 12 years, including six on its executive committee and a term as board vice president of marketing. The former Yum! Brands executive said he got hooked on classical music in middle school and after moving to Louisville in 1997 was happy to get involved with the orchestra.

But on Monday, Ehrig decided he’d had enough. He resigned from the board, in large part because of his “adamant” opposition to its vote that day to replace the musicians who make up the 75-year-old orchestra.

“You don’t handle negotiations by putting ultimatums forward on either side, because it doesn’t work,” Ehrig told The Courier-Journal in an interview Tuesday. “You both have to give a little and move toward the middle.”

“We seemed to be making progress,” he said of the work done last week. “And why do you pull the plug when you’re making progress?”

Management has given the musicians until Monday to say whether they plan to continue working in their positions.

The board’s vote on that deadline came after months of contentious negotiations between the orchestra and its musicians over the number of full-time players who would be covered in a new contract. The previous contract expired May 31.

The move to hire replacement players comes while the orchestra is on the American Federation of Musicians’ “unfair list,” which means members of the union who work for the orchestra could be fined up to $50,000 and/or expelled.

All current orchestra musicians are members of the federation.

Action questioned

Though Ehrig said Tuesday that he doesn’t believe that the musicians fully appreciate the financial bind that the orchestra is in, he said the board’s move Monday was unwise.

“The board doesn’t seem to understand that they are our musicians and that the idea of trying to replace them with nonunion musicians or ones who would come from other cities is just not practical,” Ehrig said. “It’s never been done by any orchestra in the country.”

He noted that almost all American professional musicians are union members.

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Ehrig, 61, joined the orchestra board not long after moving from New York in 1997 to work as a senior director of government relations and international affairs for Yum. He retired from the company in 2008.

Today, his philanthropic work includes service as chairman of the board of the Children’s Hospital Foundation and a position on the board of the Family & Children’s Place.

Ehrig said his career as a lobbyist often put him in the middle of strategic negotiations, and he believes that much of the talks between the Louisville Orchestra and the musicians has been poorly handled.

Orchestra Chief Executive Robert Birman said Tuesday that he was disappointed that Ehrig, whom he described as an “intelligent and smart guy,” had decided to step down. “We’re grateful to him and for all of his service,” Birman said.

Birman added that the 41 remaining board members are “absolutely aligned” with the decision to hire replacement musicians.

“If anything, I’m only surprised by how aligned the board is, because this has been a difficult and very challenging year,” he said.

Ehrig said he thinks some other board members also are frustrated by the process, though “I’m probably the radical in resigning over the replacement workers.”

Other board members could not be reached for comment.

Last week, the musicians had agreed to part of a management contract offer to employ all salaried musicians willing to work, starting Jan. 9, even though management had consistently proposed to employ 55 musicians, down from 71 in the previous contract.

The offer proposed that the musicians and orchestra officials would work to raise the extra money needed to pay any musicians beyond the 55 positions, but that the orchestra would employ only 55 of them by June 2013.

The musicians disagreed with other parts of the offer, including outside work and pension issues, which led management to rescind its offer Monday.

Management has given the musicians until next Monday to say whether they plan to continue working in their positions.

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During Tuesday’s interview, Ehrig praised Mayor Greg Fischer and mediators Henri Mangeot and Ralph Craviso, who were brought in to aid the negotiations, for helping both sides arrive at some compromises.

Mangeot is executive director of the Louisville Labor Management Committee, and Craviso is a labor-relations expert who was hired with money from an anonymous donor.

Positions harden

But Ehrig said he has seen the events of the past year — including the negotiations and the disputes that played out after the orchestra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last December — as having hardened the positions of the two sides.

“I think both sides saw the other side coming close to an agreement last week and then pulling back,” he said. “And since neither side trusts the other, unfortunately we have the impasse that we now have.”

Ehrig said that it has been frustrating that some of the musicians don’t seem to understand the severity of the orchestra’s financial straits.

“The (bankruptcy) judge ordered us to take money out of our endowments to continue operations for the season, and it drained down our endowments to the point that I don’t know what kind of budget we can support,” he said.

Although the financial situation is the most immediate issue, Ehrig said that the orchestra also needs to make itself more viable in ways that other orchestras, such as those in Nashville and Cincinnati, have done to help them thrive in recent years.

“The board only considered the labor issues, which are part of it,” Ehrig said. “But we have to radically change the orchestra functions. We have to change the programming we’re putting out there. We have to radically change how we raise money.

“These old, orchestra-style fundraisers, where everyone goes in wearing a tux, are dead.”

He said he also thinks it’s necessary for the musicians to be active in the organization’s management decisions, as is the case in some other orchestras, notably those in London.

Ehrig said his appreciation of classical music dates to his youth, when he began listening to it, and grew from there.

Years later, while working in different cities, he subscribed to performances of the local orchestras, including in Washington, D.C., and New York.

“I couldn’t write million-dollar donations to get on the board of the New York Philharmonic, but when I came to Louisville,” he said, “I saw that my modest investments could be considered significant and I wanted to get involved.”